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Family business forged by fire

Two generations work the steel in Watkins for Parker shop

Doug Hancock uses a blowtorch for "bluing" a piece of steel artwork. The process protects the metal from rust and gives the piece a blue-black finish.

Tom Skelley

Vivian Franklin holds a freshly-cut piece of steel in her family's metal shop in Watkins on Sept. 17. Franklin works during the week at Oppenheimer funds as a business analyst, and typically spends her entire weekend in the family's shop designing and cutting metal artwork.

Tom Skelley

A pile of discarded and extra pieces of steel reveals a tenet at the core of the Franklins' business. Cassie Franklin calls the discarded pieces "giblets."

Tom Skelley

Vivian Franklin, left, pulls a cutout from a sheet of metal being cut as her daughter Cassie and Cassie's boyfriend Doug Hancock look over specifications for the pieces he's finishing. The family works together every Sunday in their shop in Watkins, making custom art pieces, window well covers and other furnishings.

Tom Skelley

Vivian Franklin pulls scrap pieces from a sheet of steel as her plasma cutter cuts a pattern and showers the floor with sparks. Franklin draws her designs by hand, scans them into a computer and imports the design into the cutter, which takes over from there.

Tom Skelley

Cassie Franklin stands before a display of finished steel artwork in the Cassteen Ironworks store in the shopping plaza at the intersection of Mainstreet and Parker Road. The store deals in custom artwork and furnishings like chairs, benches and window well covers.

Tom Skelley

A piece of steel is "blued" with a blowtorch by Doug Hancock at the Cassteen Ironworks metal shop in Watkins. Using different temperatures with the blowtorch brings out different colors, predominantly gold, blue and silver, in the blueing process.

In 2008, when Chris Franklin told his wife, Vivian, he wanted to buy a plasma steel cutter and go into business making custom metal artwork, she didn't approve.

He bought the enormous, costly device anyway, and showed her his work.

“He had cut a circle, a square and a line,” she says with a smirk. “So I learned how to use it, and it actually was a lot of fun.”

One sleepless night she decided to tinker with the device and cut a clock face with a flatbed engine design, and she was hooked.

“I'm crafty, I like crocheting and doing other crafts and playing piano. I didn't think I'd like working with metal,” Vivian says. But “I get to be creative and it's exciting to see the finished product.”

The Franklins, their daughter Cassie, and Cassie's boyfriend, Doug Hancock, all live and work together at their home and metal shop in Watkins, just south of Denver International Airport, making custom pieces of steel art to sell at their store, Cassteen Ironworks, at 10941 S. Parker Road.

Chris spends this Sunday making deliveries while Vivian cuts outlines of elk, birds and trees into a six-by-four-foot sheet of metal, and Hancock grinds, torches and polishes the pieces she's prepared for him. Cassie goes between the two to make sure everyone's on the same page, while her sons, Luke, 10 and Giovanni, 7, play outside.

Finding time to design and finish orders is a challenge. Vivian and Hancock both work other jobs full time during the week while Cassie and Chris man the store Monday through Saturday.

But they love what they do, even if it took some convincing to get Vivian on board at first.

“She didn't want to do it, but she did it anyway because she loves me,” Chris says. “Now she does it because she loves it.”

For more information on Cassteen Ironworks, visit their webpage at metalartcolorado.com.

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